


14 July, 1942

by xiamer



Category: Original Work
Genre: Assassins & Hitmen, Gen, Kinda, World War II, set in the 1940s, sorta - Freeform, this is just a small snapshot and probably makes no sense without the rest of context but YANNO, this one moment is set in paris
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:53:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25301170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xiamer/pseuds/xiamer
Summary: Liesel and Kristoph have their annual meet-up, this time in the slums and back alleys of ParisThey catch up as any other siblings would, but they aren’t any sort of ordinary siblingssorry i am SO bad at summaries
Relationships: Original Female Character & Original Male Character
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	14 July, 1942

**Author's Note:**

> hi !! 
> 
> if y’all don’t know me, hello i go by el, and im pretty much only in the les mis part of ao3, but i wanted to put up different one-shots for my own original work; this is something that ive had a plot running through my head for like 5 years, and i want an excuse to write it down and show it off lol
> 
> if y’all DO know me, what’s up, i swear i’ll write all of those sequels i promised, and ill add another chapter to the old fic 
> 
> so yeah ! 
> 
> i hope you enjoy and any mistakes are my own fault, sorry about that

“You look positively chipper for someone who’s about ten minutes away from being shot,” Liesel smirked at her brother before continuing, “now sir, why this particular café?”

The two were meeting in a dingy back-alley café in the 19th arrondissement of Paris; not the most hidden place they could have chosen, nor the most hidden place that they had ever met at, but it was safely enough tucked away that the risks were low. 

Liesel’s enquiry was made as they walked to the backroom, which had a small amount of people in it, though the crowd consisted mainly of drunkards; the café was often taken over at nights for Parisian Resistance meetings, so the pair knew in advance that the backroom would likely be the safest option; though, the fact that the café was known for these meetings made the place all the more likely to be under German surveillance. What even was life anymore?

“Well my dear,” Kristoph paused for a moment as they sat across each other at a small round table and flagged down a waitress, “I figured that this would be the least likely place to encounter any familiar faces,” he turned to face their server, a small girl who seemed hardly older than Liesel, “I hope you are well Mademoiselle, what do you have for your selection of teas?”

The girl screwed her face up in concentration before speaking. 

“We have… chamomile, an herbal blend… a vanilla?”

Kristoph mercifully cut her off and ordered the chamomile, giving the waitress a gentle smile as she turned to his sister. 

“Just give me the strongest brew of black coffee that you can legally serve,” she paused as if to think about it, before adding, “hell, give me the strongest you can illegally serve if you’d prefer.”

The girl's lips fell open into a soft “o”, exposing her bottom teeth that were rough in the way that only a poverty struck child’s could be, before she snapped her mouth shut, scribbled onto her paper, and turned around, promising to be back with their drinks soon. 

Kristoph huffed amusedly and propped an elbow on the table, resting his face on it. 

“You already have such a record, yet it seems to be your life’s goal to make it as long as you can.”

“I hardly think that out of everything I’ve done, they’re going to bring me in on a charge of requesting one too many espresso shots,” Liesel snorted, “though who knows, perhaps that will be the driving force behind a life’s sentence.”

Kristoph sighed, and his face dimmed a little as he straightened up.

“You of all people should know that you’re not getting a life sentence, El. There’s no way in hell they're going to let you go like that.”

Liesel reached across the table to cover her brother’s hand with her own, and tried her best to give a reassuring smile.

“But  _ you _ of all people should know that I’m not going to get caught.”

Kristoph sighed again, but at that moment their waitress came back, setting down the two drinks, and quickly bumbling out. As soon as she had set the coffee down, Kristoph wrinkled his nose, and when she left he muttered something about it smelling like pure gasoline. 

“You know, they could poison you one of these days, and you’d never be able to tell because it would probably taste the exact same as what you drink.”

“I’d like to see them try,” she then tutted, “Kris, you must have figured by now that the only thing keeping me together at this point is coffee and pure spite.”

Giving her a wry smile his only answer was, “do I ever.”

The two sat in companionable silence and Liesel took the time to examine the other occupants of the room. 

There was a short man dozing in a chair by the window. His green jacket was draped over the back of the chair, and the man was wearing trousers that seemed to match. Liesel noted that there were smears of black across the parts of the clothing that she could see, and the white undershirt seemed stained with sweat. The man was a mechanic; after seeing as many people as she had, Liesel felt very confident in her assumptions of them. 

At a table maybe two metres away from the mechanic, a tall, dark haired man, with glasses thick enough to almost rival her own, was having an animated discussion with someone just as tall, the biggest difference between the two being his golden curls and sharper features, compared to his friend’s glasses and open face. Those two must be students. 

A young girl sits alone in the corner, furiously scribbling into a notepad, occasionally directing her gaze upwards, as though looking to the heavens for advice. Soon enough, another girl sat down and started to speak with a dreamy look in her eyes. The one writing seemed unimpressed, but she set aside her pen and focused the gaze of her amber eyes fully on her companion. They were hard, full of abuse; Liesel knew the look well, after all, she was the one who had worn it in her own lavender eyes for longer than she even bothered to keep track of. There was one main difference between her and this girl, however. The girl’s eyes appeared to hold some sort of fondness for her auburn haired friend; in fact, the closer Liesel looked, the more the fondness seemed to look like flat out adoration and love. These must be students as well, though certainly younger than the other two. 

Kristoph lightly rapped his knuckles on the table, bringing her attention back to him. 

“So as lovely as it is to be able to catch up with you,” he sighed, Liesel hated when he sighed like that, “you seemed very confident that you’re not getting caught anytime soon. What, or I suppose  _ who _ , is your next mission?”

Liesel began to bring her coffee towards her lips, before freezing halfway through and for the first time since the war had started, let her expression become slightly panicky. 

“Franz. It’s Franz Von Zianna.”

She set her cup back on the table and schooled her expression back into her usual cool distaste. But she knew that Kristoph had seen the plain fear written across her features. There was panic, yes, but there was also pure terror at the thought of what she had to do. 

Kristoph glanced around the room, checking to see if anyone was listening, before leaving in close enough to whisper. 

“You can’t kill him, I know you can’t. You’re going to act like you can, but damn it Lieselotte I  _ know  _ you cannot kill that man.”

Liesel began to pick at the already chipping varnish of the table as Kristoph leaned back, before pushing out a quiet affirmation to what he said. Kristoph sighed once more, and Liesel looked up from the table to see him worrying at his lip. She heaved a sigh of her own, before signalling to their waitress that she wanted to pay. Her brother was silent as she did, and they began to walk out together. 

They passed drunks, children, students, workers, everyone, before finally making their way to the exit of the building. Kristoph held the door open for her. Once they were outside, they linked arms and began to stroll towards the Square Eugène Varlin. It’s only once they’ve passed the fifth German soldier on a street corner that Liesel breaks the silence. 

“Some days I wish we could start all over again. I wish I could go back to before I was born and change something about myself. Or everything.”

“What would you change?”

“I just wish I weren’t, I don’t know,” she exhales, and in one breath, Liesel seems to age fifty years, “like this, I guess. It would be so much easier to do that, than the make the world less anti-Semitic, you know?”

Kristoph gives her arm a soft squeeze before giving her an even softer, “I know.”

“Today’s Bastille Day, isn’t it?”

If Kristoph is surprised by the sudden change of subject, he makes no acknowledgement of it, simply nodding instead. 

“You know, it’s their national holiday, but the people haven’t been free in what,” she looks at him for confirmation, “two years?”

“May of 1940, and it’s July of 1942, so a little over two years, yes.”

They reached Square Eugène Varlin and at that point it took all of Liesel’s restraint to not hurl herself into the water right then and there; she’s frustrated with the world, and even more so with her inability to articulate it. 

“Citizens,” she begins to softly recite, “in the future there will be neither darkness nor thunderbolts; neither ferocious ignorance, nor bloody retaliation. As there will be no more Satan, there will be no more Michael. In the future no one will kill any one else, the earth will beam with radiance, the human race will love. The day will come, citizens, when all will be concord, harmony, light, joy and life; it will come, and it is in order that it may come that we are about to die.”

Liesel closes her eyes and tilts her head towards the sky. 

“How is it that a man who never even existed believed in the goodness of the world more than every living human today? He’s a creation by an author, detailing an event thirty years after it occurred, yet I so desperately wish for men of the world to base themselves off of him. It sounds beyond idiotic, I know, but…”

She turns her gaze back to Kristoph. 

“I’m so tired Kris. I’ve never gotten a proper night’s rest in my entire life. They say you’re supposed to sleep for eight hours but I’m lucky if I can manage five. It’s just- I wasn’t kidding when I said that coffee was one of the only things holding me together, you know?”

As he wraps his younger sister in his arms, Kristoph whispers a small “I know”.

Out comes a choked laugh, or maybe a stifled sob, he can’t really be sure; Liesel had never shown any real emotion, not when she was born, nor when he found her in an orphanage in Snina at the age of three. She was not a crier, she was not emotional, she almost wasn’t human. 

It was the last fact that stung her the most. 

Liesel cleared her throat and stepped away. She wasn’t a very tactile person, probably due to the lack of positive touch in her life, but she still seemed reluctant to let go. 

“Forgive me,” she cleared her throat again, “I didn’t mean to break all composure like that. There’s just so much about life that I wish we could  _ do _ something about. Let’s say we win the war; what happens then? The men we’ve killed are gone, yet the world still turns. You and I are both killers, there’s no denying that. Whether or not we’re murderers is something else entirely. Were they unlawful killings? If you are told by the government, the creator of the laws, that they need you to do it, is it still murder? I- I never asked for this. I’ve always wondered why I don’t just give up. It’s easier to die than to live, do you know who told me that?” Kristoph shakes his head and she continues, “it was Oleksander. He told me that before my life truly went downhill. ‘It’s easier to die than to live, but when have you ever chosen the easier option?’ These days…”

She doesn’t have to finish the thought, Kristoph can piece the rest together. He pulls her into another embrace, steering them towards a bench. 

“I’m not even sixteen,” she whispers, “but I feel as though I’ve lived at least twelve lifetimes, each more hellish than the last.”

Kristoph holds her closer, lightly stroking through her hair. She wraps her arms around his waist, tucks her legs up onto the bench, and just holds onto him, as though he’s her lifeline. And in many ways, he is. 

How long they stayed there, neither knew, but when they eventually got up, they had to say their reluctant goodbyes. Curfew was fast approaching, and the two could not stay together for long. 

“I truly hope that I don’t see you again any time soon. I hope the next time I see you, maybe it can be you, me, and Fernand.”

Liesel smiled at the thought of Fernand. 

“You called him by his name.”

It comes out almost like a question. 

“Of course I did. He’s my brother, genetics be damned.”

Liesel lunged into a tight embrace, and with a small whisper of “be safe”, she let go and walked the opposite direction from which they came. 

Liesel hoped she wouldn’t see Kristoph again for a very long time, but fate is a cruel mistress, and seemed to relish in burdening and harming her most vulnerable. 

**Author's Note:**

> like it ? love it ? hate it ? im just glad you read it !
> 
> hehe how many references to enjolras could you find ??
> 
> sorry if this makes like, no sense, it’ll probably be better when i get other parts up, for that sweet, sweet context y’know ?
> 
> anyways, im going to bed, so yeah !!
> 
> -el <3
> 
> (no i didn’t base her nickname off of mine lol, i didn’t even connect the dots there)


End file.
